Vernissage

The Kayserling Gallery has seen better days. Artists once celebrated their breakthrough here, but now audiences are staying away in droves. The market has changed, and the ambitious new director, Peter Kayserling, son of the old patriarch Wilbert, is trying to reach new target groups by exhibiting the work of a rather «middle-brow» painter. Wilbert is sceptical: Art may have become more «democratic» – but does that mean you have to lower the prices of the works before the actual vernissage? From a business perspective, that makes little sense. But it's not just between the generations that conflict arises; a battle of the sexes has also begun. Henriette, Peter's sister, actually considers herself much more suited to taking over her father's legacy – why else did she study art? And Hedda, Peter's wife, is so bored by her husband's ambition that she prefers to drink herself back into her wild past. While outside, indecisive weather weighs heavily on everything, the people in the gallery become more and more prisoners of themselves – until the tensions erupt.

With dark humour and echoes of Chekhov's tragicomedies, Robert Seethaler paints a picture of a turning point in history in his first original play. Vernissage is a relentless swan song to traditional values in general and cultural life in particular – and at the same time a stubborn «nevertheless», according to the motto: «Art is nothing, but it is all we have.»